Toward a Bioregional State

Launched to provide an information service connected with _Toward a Bioregional State, the book; the blog is the commentary, your questions and my answers, and news from around the world related to the issues of sustainability and unsustainability in a running muse on various issues of concern or inspiration.

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Ecological Reformation: Extending Checks and Balances Beyond the Government to Maintain Ecological and Bodily Integrity

I discussed the bodily integrity principle at greater length in a previous post:

"Codex Alimentarius's current versions, in terms of the bioregional state, cross the 'bodily integrity' line "that government shall not pass." The fuller quote of bioregional state [bodily integrity] principles, from Toward a Bioregional State's Ecological Bill of Rights, says in part:

"Attempts of some to pressure government to enforce certain moralities to regulate internal bodily issues are forms of bodily tyranny that break the skin barrier that government shall not pass. The Constitution of Sustainability shall assure bodily integrity through upholding bodily rights, instead of demoting them."

Additionally, the tyrannous news above that only works when other tyrannous versions of institutions are associated with state tyranny reminded me of the promise in the preface of Toward a Bioregional State to extend analysis of tyranny beyond the state:

...[W]hat I am arguing is that these are general structural requirements for all states as they move towards sustainability....Structurally, the state in general requires changing, instead of only a change on the level of political party ideas for instance. These bioregional letters propose how existing unsustainable states could be 'made over' into sustainable states: typically, a different topic is addressed in each letter. There are 26 bioregional letters--so far. [However,]...[s]tate structures are far from the only aspect of importance [in avoiding tyranny], though they are a formal requirement. I am working on other issues beside the state--the institutional interactions between science, finance, and consumption are equally important in sustainability because the 'state' influences consumptive politics in these four issues."

In the 30 minute interview I gave about the book, I talked about this as well, how a wider ecological tyranny depends upon agreeable institutional practices beyond the state and their material and developmental choices.

So Toward a Bioregional State is 'book one' dealing with state institutions that oppose ecological tyranny. It is the first book in the world on green constitutional engineering.

It implies its companion book, 'Toward an Ecological Reformation,' that is on a wider "Ecological Reformation" of institutional design and institutional interaction required in other areas to move to sustainability.

To elaborate these other institutional areas toward sustainability, first it is required to discuss why we are required to discuss novel levels of checks and balances beyond state institutions: [1] because politics is animated from other areas of institutional design beyond the state in order to keep tyrannies in place, and [2] because there are as a consequence interactive institutional practices that create tyranny and unsustainability--or alternatively, #1 and #2 can make sustainability. In short, more than state institutions create good or bad developmental policies and developmental choices.

Toward this wider Ecological Reformation, it is important to note our ecological tyrannies are this wider cross-linked tyranny agreed upon by interactive institutions beyond, though with, the state institutions. Any ecological tyranny requires unrepresentatively designed and unrepresentatively interactive institutions in four areas: state institutions, science institutions, financial institutions, and consumptive institutions.

A sustainable society has [1] institutional designs, [2] checks and balances between these, and [3] multiple simultaneous choice allowances within these categories to keep unrepresentative and unsustainable collusions and clientelism from coalescing, while encouraging coordination only via open, representative, and politically transparent ways.

The Three Dimensions of Tyranny: Political, Bodily, and Ecological

The idea is that political, bodily, and ecological tyranny depends upon the same interaction of informal power animating these four institutional design areas and their institutional alliances. (Instead of this three-fold way of thinking about it, you might more simply consider that 'ecological' tyranny involves simultaneously a material and ideological tyranny inter-merged in particular material flows linked to particular legitimating ideologies--that have their political, bodily (health), and ecological effects.)

First, an analysis of tyranny is unable to be limited to only the political institutions and human issues. It requires an analysis of how tyranny is a form of unrepresentative, unecological development effects beyond mere human and beyond mere state institutions--that of course have human health tyranny repercussions in full circle. Second, an analysis of tyranny is unable to be limited to only analysis of state institutions since states are unable to be a tyranny by themselves. They require equally tyrannous institutional designs and collusive behavior between unrepresentative scientific, financial, and consumptive institutions. These other areas of potential tyranny work with an unrepresentative state to create these three dimensions of tyranny.

This means that sometimes maintaining this bodily integrity requires maintaining ecological integrity. This means that opposing tyranny in the state goes beyond mere state design suggestions. To achieve sustainability is to offer novel checks and balances for the institutional design and the institutional interactions between state, science, finance, and consumption institutions.

That is one of the arguments of Toward a Bioregional State and its "book two" in progress which has examples of [1] institutional design frameworks to achieve this in these additional areas, [2] conceptualizes how to maintain checks and balances against their degradative institutional collusions to avoid politicized clientelism, and [3] how to have multiple institutional alternatives (in each of the consumptive categories for wider consumer choice; and in the four areas of state, science, finance, and consumption to maintain regional institutional practices capable of constructing their own optimal interests in particular areas).

This implies that to avoid political, bodily, and ecological tyranny requires a larger Ecological Reformation of 'the four sovereigns' and how they interact. Most political science reductionistically limits analysis to state institutions and only human-to-human relations. These are only a small part of how political power is exercised through the other three institutional forms' practices and design motifs as well as through particular politicized materials and technologies as a consumptive infrastructure.

Political, bodily, and ecological tyranny can be their unrepresentative interaction, or sustainability can be their interaction via checks and balances against degradative material regimes of collusion.

In the introduction's examples, checks and balances on one consumptive material corporation (VeriChip) from owning another 'science/knowledge/database' gathering corporation (Steel Vault) is one example. The other example would be checks and balances on state power (the British state) from being able to gather material DNA, the material/consumptive position. Keeping these institutions separate maximizes greater public input from particular regions instead of regimes of centralized political power, knowledge, and materials flows as clientelism. Another example would be how oil corporations would be checked and balanced from buying up their functional alternatives in the energy category (and mostly, just refusing to utilize them, thus securing their political clientelism in the energy category via oil as a form of tyranny). The same check and balance within the consumptive category would keep genetically modified crop (consumptive) corporations from (a) being half owned by the state (like in the case of some of them) or from buying up their functional equivalents (natural seed companies) in the same consumptive category (and refusing to sell them, just to have more control and clientelism in the reduction of choice arrangement they desire in their consumptive category). All these checks and balances would reduce very real frameworks of political tyranny that is exercised outside of exclusive state institutions.

Another recent example of this form of collusion between science institutions, informal state elites, and corporate ownership as an interlocked as tyranny is the "Climategate" issue: that there are various Al Gore financial kickbacks created behind the scenes, justified by a climate science that is heavily partial and even conspiratorial (and see this) instead of based on open peer review as real science is. Meanwhile, Gore's corporations are being funded by the federal government in the process--three levels of tyrannous collusion that is without political transparency:

"Yesterday we reported on how Gore was set to become the first "carbon billionaire" on the back of vast profits from companies invested in the "green revolution" that the former vice-president has a hefty stake in. We also highlighted how the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX) has direct ties to both Al Gore and Maurice Strong, two figures intimately involved with a long standing movement to use the theory of man made global warming as a mechanism for profit and social engineering. Gore's investment company, Generation Investment Management, which sells carbon offset opportunities, is the largest shareholder of CCX. Gore stands to make windfall profits from his stake in carbon trading systems that would be used to manage the cap and trade system currently being readied for passage in the Senate, but his admission that CO2 is far less of a threat than global warming alarmists have been claiming could be a terminal blow for such a proposal. As Andrew Bolt writes in today's Australian Herald Sun, his flip-flopping "Suggests not only that was Gore wrong to claim the science was "settled", but that the hugely expensive schemes to "stop" warming by slashing carbon dioxide emissions will be less than half as effective as claimed."

I'm interested in demoting polluting, corruptible, and degradative raw material regimes as much as the next guy. We can do it because all the solutions for sustainability already exist. I note many at Toward a Bioregional State's companion blog, Commodity Ecology. There I list 89 categories of consumptive use and the more sustainable technologies and materials that already exist, waiting to be applied. The technology and materials for sustainability have been available for decades, though left unapplied. I suggest we look to political corruption around status quo raw material regimes in their categories as the rationale why we are denied local optimal solutions for sustainability. Solving political tyrannies is of the first order--to be a good ally for those introducing the sustainable technologies we already have available.

However, back to the carbon regime of tyranny, to create a novel tyranny sold as a solution is counterproductive and will only contribute to unsustainable politics by soldering together a form of repressive, exclusively centralizing institutions that merely claim to be dealing with environmental issues, when their centralization will be a cause of future forms of political tyranny and ecological tyranny as well.

There are at least four rings in the environmental circus (i.e., four ways to respond to environmental crises), and the bioregional state solutions toward more local representation of ecological self-interest by freeing up technologies and local optimal uses of them and encouraging removing political corruptions that maintain unsustainably are in contrast to corporate media suggestions of tyrannous arrangements that remove local optimality despite being sold as environmental solutions.

The Four Unrepresentative Institutions of Tyranny: State, Science, Finance, and Consumption; or the Four Representative Institutions of Sustainability with Different Institutional Designs

Ecological Reformation is the wider argument that ecological tyranny requires solutions inclusive of though beyond state-level political tyranny to solve. States are only one quarter responsible for ecological tyranny, since ecological tyranny is a series of other institutional designs and top level personnel exchange and policy coordination between between how state, scientific, financial, and consumptive institutions work together to construct such a tyranny (typically recycling the same people in different positions to "HARMonize" everything) that destroys political, ecological and bodily integrity. Over time, this destroys the state itself through lack of legitimacy that I discuss this historical process of organizational blames for environmental degradation in my recent book Ecological Revolution (2009).

So a wider Ecological Reformation assuring both design and interactions of 'the four sovereigns' avoid institutional and personnel collusion is required to address these interactive issues of avoiding political, bodily, and ecological tyranny. Otherwise, environmental degradation processes are just another form of 'normal accident' from a tightly coupled system of corruptions.

Therefore the bioregional state is required to recommend a wider Ecological Reformation: a series of more sound institutions for more political, bodily, and ecological protection, in more sound versions of scientific institutions, financial institutions/instruments, and consumptive institutions taking into account their interactions with each other in a larger social context that can either encourage environmental degradation or environmental sustainability.

The current environmentally degradative hegemonic versions of state, science, finance, and consumption are collusive forms institutionally speaking, and lead toward an historical environmental degradation processes.

Other versions of institutional design and institutional interaction checks and balances are suggested in future posts. This is the first in a multi-part series detailing institutional adaptations and ideas for how to generate checks and balances in areas of state, science, finance, and consumption to avoid the forms of environmental degradation through collusive unrepresentative clientelism limiting our choices in these areas--toward mass support of only what tyrants allow materially.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Green Constitutional Engineering, in a Thousand Words

Toward a Bioregional State is the first book on green constitutional engineering. For all those who want a weblink to pass to others with a very short discussion of the book, this is it.

Below is a recent editorial of mine about Toward a Bioregional State. It was published in October 2009 in the Korea Times, an English language publication, on the web as well as in the printed paper as "Today's Column."

[A more recent summary was published in March 2012 in the Korean Hankyoreh, a more independent newspaper. That is added below after the first summary.]

For a background of South Korea presently, there is a huge support for constitutional change. This is among the public (72.2% support), among a huge proportion of both major (gatekeeping) parties of the left and right (and minor parties), and among a few governors of provinces that want greater autonomy. The President wants electoral district changes and voting law changes combined.

Many frameworks in which politics are conducted are seen as increasingly illegitimate among a wide amount of people who disbelieve their left and right parties equally (with 35% and 30% support, respectively, among the public).

South Korea is drifting toward widespread constitutional change. However, when constitutional change is conducted by parties that no one trusts, this potentially solders in only greater corruption, gatekeeping, and environmental degradation of the current systemic status quo that wants to destroy the state frameworks that interfere with its degradative policies. Potentially, given more representative elites doing it, such constitutional change can actually solve systemic issues and lead to a more legitimated state and a more competitive party system. We shall see. My suggestions are of course for the latter: how to get more representative elites in the first place to make a better context for constitutional change.

Besides constitutional engineering debates, there are huge environmental concerns about inequitable state decisions on the environmental and health policies and an increasingly inequitable development policy in Korea wrecking their agriculture, creating their disappearing middle class, and demoting regional biodiversity potentially. Solving all three concerns--constitutional engineering, inequitable elite development policy, and gatekept environmental concern--is what Toward a Bioregional State is all about.

So I decided to shrink-wrap a summary of Toward a Bioregional State for the Korea Times. This newspaper has been close to the 'political English-reading public' in Korea since 1950. I describe how the constitutional engineering change can solve all three things simultaneously--with green constitutional engineering.

Three major political concerns of Korea ― equitable economics, constitutional change and the environment ― are seldom discussed together despite being interlinked.

I suggest a method to interlink them with green constitutional engineering, widening the "Green New Deal" toward one of political stability, demotion of corruption and more representative equitable development. Three ideas are offered for constitutional revision debates in Korea in how green constitutional engineering can solve them.

The first debate is over districting; yet, no one has offered how to avoid districting that is partisan gerrymandering. Many accuse parties involved with "district reform" as merely scheming to elect more partisan incumbents by "pre-rigging" elections with creative line drawing.

This fails to create a competitive election and merely divides opposition artificially into separate districts or stuffs ballots (residences) of one party's supporters in one district. A real electoral reform of districts would draw them in a nonpartisan manner.

The public can be assured of this by making stable watersheds as the mandated form of electoral districting. Watersheds are biophysically real lines separating different drainage basins (water catchments). Drainage basins concentrate more than water.

Since much pollution risk is waterborne, watersheds represent areas where common environmental risk experiences exist. Therefore, watershed election districts should be the durable form of environmental risk feedback into state politics.

As a publicly desired neutral, nonpartisan way of drawing election boundaries, it has positive effects on party competition by removing gerrymandering to create truly representative parties. Parties should compete to represent the people's interests, not simply win by default because of gerrymandering.

A second debate is over whether multimember districts (multiple seats per district) or majoritarian districts (one seat per district) would provide stability. Political scientists note that stability problems exist because of ``pure'' static types of biased incentive structures for competition before elections and cooperation after them.

As a check against this, I offer a compromise by suggesting that "flexible seating" be institutionalized depending on the election's outcome. If a watershed district votes more than 50 percent for one candidate, then one person should be seated to accurately reflect the result of the majority.

If a district votes for only a plurality winner (less than 50 percent), then the top three multiple winners should be seated (with their direct percentage of the vote seat) to accurately reflect the result of the majority as well ― since voters in this case want multiple people representing them. This "flexible seating" puts the decision in the hands of the people.

It is achieved by "PRMA" (proportional representation with majoritarian allotment) potential voting rules. Both structural outcomes are options that simultaneously work as a check and balance on the biases of each and also encourage an interparty competition to have incentives to integrate the full electorate.

Smaller parties are assured their contention is worth something under plurality wins, and larger parties are encouraged to be more integrative for majority wins. Korea has had ever-lowering vote totals and party legitimacy. PRMA would provide parties with incentives to be more integrative.

A third debate is the relative power between the executive (prime minister/president) branch versus the legislature. I suggest a similar merged solution in a "flexible executive" arrangement based on election outcomes as well.

Let the outcome of voting determine the structure in each election through how their level of trustworthiness of a candidate is reflected accurately in how much power a winner is allowed to have each time.

For instance, if an executive candidate gets over 50 percent of the vote, the executive branch goes presidential for that term given the greater trust shown. If an executive gets a plurality win (less than 50 percent), the winner has less trust, and the public wants him or her on a tighter leash.

This means the executive goes parliamentarian, and the winner is a prime minister that rules in closer association with legislative checks. This provides legislative checks on executive power.

However, multiparty legislatures can have their own hamstrung "gridlock" difficulties and require a check against their power by allowances for having a stronger executive as president when election outcomes demand it.

It's encouragement for any executive to win as much power and legitimacy behind his or her party nationally beforehand instead of forcing it afterward in a partisan manner. A "flexible executive" solves several debates at once.

These three ideas (of about 60 in my book) are worth tabling to concerned Koreans wishing to avoid repeating mistakes of static, anthropocentric constitutional engineering. Stable constitutions can provide party incentives to integrate the full electorate and to integrate the environment.

States are eco-centric institutions that manipulate for good or ill variegated environments, and South Korea is a very regionalized polity. This regionality can easily be extended in the event of North/South Korean unification, unlike other plans tabled.

President Lee Myung-bak talks about bulldozing regionalism. He sounds like the late former President Roh Moo-hyun. However, that would be disastrously destabilizing, because Korean politics are regional. The state can work creatively with regional reality to be more legitimate and stable.

Opposing regionality is political suicide as Roh's attempt showed while in office, and Lee's attempt would result in the same failure. With an abysmally low approval rating for Lee's Grand National Party (GNP) and its main opposition the Democratic Party (DP) with only 35 percent and 30 percent, respectively, the only way to get referendum approval is to make it clearly a nonpartisan change.

Suggestions I have are nonpartisan, multiparty enhancements with green multiplier effects. When you integrate the full electorate in this fashion, in stable watersheds of environmental risk feedback, you are on the road toward a bioregional state with a representative development policy and a stable multiparty system of legitimate government.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2009/10/160_54108.html

---

Below is the second version, published several years later in the Hankyoreh:

Three major political concerns of Korea ― equitable economics, constitutional change and the environment ― are seldom discussed together despite being interlinked.

I suggest a method to interlink them with green constitutional engineering, making a real Green New Deal toward one of political stability, demotion of corruption, and more representative equitable development for Korea‘s different regions. Three ideas are offered for constitutional, districting, and voting law revision debates in Korea in how green constitutional engineering can solve them.

The first debate is over districting; yet, no one has offered how to avoid districting that is partisan gerrymandering. In late February 2012, sudden district changes throughout Korea for the National Assembly seem suspiciously soon before the next scramble for the national election in a few months?

Such changes were announced February 27 of course with the claim to be within the letter of the current law. However, on closer look we see selectively administered law. Some districts were altered legally under the current laws about reapportionment like reducing the shape of the least populous district (Namhae-Hadong). However, the next two most severe districts that should have been reapportioned and reshaped were not. Instead, only the fourth least populous district was changed (Damyang-Gokseong-Gurye).

This raises the specter of just a novel form of gerrymandering. Many accuse parties, left or right, involved with “district reform” as foremost scheming to re-elect or secure more partisan incumbents by “pre-rigging” elections for themselves with creative line drawing, instead of providing a process that builds competitive election choices, equitable representation, and environmentally sound development across the inequalities of Korea.

In other words, endlessly changing reapportionment tends to be captured by incumbent parties. However, the main question concerning elections and districting should be “how can districts create competitive, more
representative elections” instead of expecting merely equal numbers of people in a district to create a competitive electoral process as well? If the latter is the only question, then ’equal sized‘ gerrymandered districts that are uncompetitive are still possible, i.e., voting uniformly 90% for one candidate in a district with only 10% for the
other candidates foreordained. Korea lacks a real competitive election by district. Gerrymandering through selective administration of reapportionment laws fails to create a competitive election and merely divides opposition artificially into separate districts or stuffs ballots (residences) of one party’s supporters in one district.

A real electoral reform of districts would draw them in a nonpartisan manner for competitive elections. How can this be done? The public can be assured of this by making stable watersheds as the mandated form of electoral districting. Watersheds are biophysically real lines separating different drainage basins (water catchments). Drainage basins concentrate more than water.
Since much pollution and developmental risk is waterborne, watersheds represent areas where common environmental risk experiences exist, regardless of different people‘s party ideology.

Therefore, watershed election districts should be the durable form of environmental risk
feedback into state politics.

As a publicly desired neutral, nonpartisan way of drawing election boundaries, it has positive effects on party competition by removing gerrymandering to create truly representative parties. Parties should compete to represent the people’s interests, not simply win by default because of gerrymandering.

A second debate is over whether multimember districts (multiple seats per district), majoritarian districts (one seat per district), or proportional representation by districts would provide stability. Political scientists note that stability problems exist because of any “pure” static types since each can provide biased incentive structures
for competition before elections and for cooperation after them.
As a check against this, in voting law, I offer a compromise by suggesting that “flexible seating” be institutionalized within districts depending on the election‘s outcome. If a watershed district votes more than 50 percent for one candidate, then one person should be seated to accurately reflect the result of the majority.

If a district votes for only a plurality winner (less than 50 percent), then the top three multiple winners should be seated (with their direct percentage of their vote received as their seat’s power) to accurately reflect the result of the majority as well ― since voters in this case want multiple people representing them. This “flexible seating” puts the decision on the number of seats in the hands of the people, each time an election is conducted. “Flexible seating” puts the form of apportionment in the hands of the people as well. The candidate‘s percentage of voting power they get is based exactly on what percentage of the votes they got from the people in the election. Thus their elected levels of seat power are what they personally deserve--no more,
no less.

This is achieved by “PRMA” (proportional representation with majoritarian allotment) potential voting rules. Both structural outcomes are options that simultaneously work as a check and balance on the biases of each and also encourage an interparty competition to have incentives to integrate the full electorate.

Smaller parties are assured their contention is worth something under plurality wins, and larger parties are encouraged to be more integrative for majority wins. Korea has had ever-lowering vote totals and party legitimacy. PRMA would provide parties with incentives to be more integrative. A more competitive election by party for determining whether a seat goes majoritarian (50% to a single winner) or goes “PRMA” (3 seats for a coterie of plurality winners in apportioned fractions of voting power) is an inter-competitive party incentive to uncover vote
fraud by smaller or larger parties.

A third debate is the relative power between the executive (prime minister/president) branch versus the legislature. I suggest a similar merged solution in a “flexible executive” arrangement based on election
outcomes as well.

Let the outcome of voting determine the structure in each election through how the level of trustworthiness of a candidate is reflected accurately in how much power that winner is allowed to have each time. For instance, if an executive candidate gets over 50 percent of the vote, the executive branch goes presidential for that term given the
greater real trust shown. If an executive gets a plurality win (less than 50 percent), the winner has less trust, and the public obviously wants that executive on a tighter leash.

This means the executive goes parliamentarian, and the winner is a prime minister that rules in closer association with legislative checks. This provides legislative checks on executive power. Elected in 2008, President Lee, with his lower plurality win of 47-48% combined with one of the lowest voter turnouts ever in Korean history, would have been only a Prime Minister, a position that would have been capable of greater legislative checks upon him and his plans. These checks on a low approval President as we have seen were sorely required though they are missing currently.

However, multiparty legislatures can have their own hamstrung “gridlock” difficulties and require a check against their power. This check is by allowances for having a stronger executive as president when election outcomes demand it. Thus if Koreans do vote more than 50 percent for a future executive branch candidate, they will get a
President.

It’s encouragement for any executive to win as much power and legitimacy behind his or her party nationally beforehand instead of forcing it afterward in a partisan manner in a situation of their mere plurality
win. A “flexible executive” solves several debates at once.

These three ideas (of about 60 in my book) are worth tabling to concerned Koreans wishing to avoid repeating mistakes of static, anthropocentric constitutional engineering. Stable constitutions and districts can provide for more party incentives to integrate the full electorate, provide for competitive elections instead of equal sized
gerrymandering, and provide for equitable development by integrating the environment.

States are eco-centric institutions that manipulate for good or ill variegated environments, and South Korea is a very regionalized polity. This regionality can easily be extended in the event of North/South
Korean unification, unlike other plans tabled.

President Lee Myung-bak talks about bulldozing regionalism. He sounds like the late former President Roh Moo-hyun. However that would be disastrously destabilizing because Korean politics are regional. The state can work creatively with regional reality to be more legitimate and stable.

Opposing regionality is political suicide as Roh‘s attempt showed while in office, and Lee’s attempt has resulted in the same failure. This particularly is seen concerning his over-hastily-built riverine weirs that are unstable and leaking already combined with the forced dredging of the Korean rivers causing more erosion instead of reducing it.
Ecologically and democratically sane regional capacities of checks and balances were denied against Lee‘s unrepresentative dredging plans made in Seoul. Now as one consequence, there is an abysmally low approval rating for Lee’s own self-destroyed Grand National Party for which he has only himself to blame. It has become the New World Party, attempting to hide behind a novel name the same party cronies. Its main opposition has become the (equally renamed) Democratic United Party. Still, voters know who both parties really are. Both parties have less than 32%
support in the upcoming election with none of them achieving any form of great legitimacy. This shows the only way to get a more representative, legitimate government is to have more competitive, representative
districts that are a clearly a nonpartisan change.

Suggestions I have are nonpartisan, multiparty enhancements with green multiplier effects. When you integrate the full electorate in this fashion, in stable watersheds of environmental risk feedback, you are on the road toward a bioregional state with a representative development policy and a stable multiparty system of legitimate government.

About Me

A very down to earth* kind of guy. I'm an environmental sociologist interested in establishing material and organizational sustainability worldwide. I'm always looking for interesting materials/technologies, inspiring ideas, or institutional examples of sustainability to inspire others to recognize their choices now. To be fatalistic about an unsustainable world is a sign of a captive mind, given all our options.
*(If "earth" is defined in a planetary sense, concerning comparative historical knowledge and interest in the past 10,000 years or so anywhere...) See both blogs.